Could it be that the forecasts (positive or negative) are only a
reflection of the times they issue from? Beat down a population and the
future will look dire. Give a population a reason to live and celebrate
and the future will look bright.
An "image" is not a reality. It is a surface construct with no depth or
true design. It is, in truth, a lie.
Where do you think the "leaders" are leading us?
The present "negative forecasts" are as true for today's reality as were
the "positive forecasts" of the 1960's reality.
If you want more positivism, then give everyone a guaranteed income that
will keep them out of poverty and from illness and death's door, then
watch the culture change and grow.
D.
On 10/07/2012 9:46 AM, Arthur Cordell wrote:
http://www.crummy.com/writing/hosted/The%20Year%202000.html
The list of forecasts. Some achieved, some not. But the value of the
list of forecasts is that they saw a future. One that contained many
positive aspects. For the year 1967 the list is impressive.
Today most futurists are looking at an array of negative outcomes for
society and the globe.
Big difference. We need to have a more positive image for the future
or the negative forecasts that are much talked about today will become
reality.
arthur
*From:*[email protected]
[mailto:[email protected]] *On Behalf Of *Keith Hudson
*Sent:* Tuesday, July 10, 2012 2:27 AM
*To:* RE-DESIGNING WORK, INCOME DISTRIBUTION, EDUCATION
*Subject:* Re: [Futurework] Anthony J. Wiener, Forecaster of the
Future obit
Arthur,
Yes, "The Year 2000" was quite a book. I remember reading it with
great excitement. And quite a contrast to "Limits to Growth" published
only five years later in 1972. Since then, the real world has been a
hybrid with many surprising extras thrown in from both camps. For
example, neither dwelt on genetics and neuroscience, and the huge
effect their findings are already having on health and education
(particularly among what I call the 20-class). The result is that the
modern world is heading in a direction perpendicular to both books.
And this goes in two opposite directions also -- up and down the page,
if you like -- if one considers the very latest 'Big Science',
epigenetics, and what it has to say as to inherited psychological
susceptibilities and thus their immensely powerful 'peer group'
effects on the rate of change of cultures in adapting (or not) to a
hyper-scientific era.
It makes one think -- among the apparent trends of today -- which ones
are scalable and extrapolatable and which aren't!
Keith
At 18:16 09/07/2012, Arthur wrote:
Anthony J. Wiener, Forecaster of the Future, Is Dead at 81
//
*
* /by/ DOUGLAS MARTIN
* June 26, 2012
* Read Later
<http://www.readability.com/articles/uutgqpw7?legacy_bookmarklet=1>
Einstein said he never thought about the future because it comes soon
enough. Anthony J. Wiener thought about it deeply and influentially.
In 1967, Mr. Wiener, a self-described futurist, collaborated with
Herman Kahn
<http://www.hudson.org/learn/index.cfm?fuseaction=staff_bio&eid=HermanKahn>
to write a 431-page book brimming with forecasts for the year 2000.
Home computers? Check. Artificial organs and limbs? Check. Pagers and
"perhaps even two-way pocket phones?" Why, yes!
But the millennium turned without noiseless helicopters replacing
taxis. Artificial moons still do not illuminate huge swaths of the
Earth. And are you, too, still waiting for that predicted 13-week
vacation?
Mr. Wiener no relation to the former congressman with a similar name
died on June 19 at his home in Closter, N.J., at 81. His wife, the
former Deborah Zaidner, said the cause was cardiac arrest.
*The book he and Mr. Kahn wrote was "The Year 2000: A Framework for
Speculation on the Next Thirty-three Years," and its publication was a
milestone in the futurism fad of the 1960s. The book combined
multifarious elements, from the insights of Aristotle to sophisticated
statistical analysis, to create what the authors called "a framework
for speculation."
*
*About half of its 100 predictions panned out not including 150-year
life spans or months of hibernation for humans.
*
But accuracy mattered less than what Mr. Wiener called "reducing the
role of thoughtlessness" in making societal choices. Clarification,
not prophecy, was the goal.
The American Academy of Arts and Sciences helped finance the study,
sponsored by theHudson Institute <http://www.hudson.org/>, for which
both authors worked.
Ken Weinstein, president of the institute, said Tuesday in an
interview that the book was remarkable for its sophisticated
methodology at a time when advanced computer modeling was still far
off. More than simply extrapolating from trends observed in the 1960s,
it tried to calculate "the complex and unexpected ways the future was
going to be different."
Anthony Janoff Wiener was born on July 27, 1930, in Newark and grew up
in Maplewood, N.J.
He set up a public address system in his high school. He and a friend
once took apart a car and then rebuilt it, just to see if they could
do it. He graduated from Harvard and Harvard Law School.
His first wife, the former Helga Susanna Gerschenkron, died in 1977.
He is survived by a son, Jonathan, and a daughter, Lisa Juckett, from
that marriage.
In addition to his wife, survivors include their son, Adam; his
sister, Carol Seaver; and three grandchildren from his first marriage.
In 1961, Mr. Wiener was a founding member of the Hudson Institute, a
research center known for Mr. Kahn's investigations of nuclear weapons
strategy. Mr. Kahn was outspoken in urging that society grapple with
the consequences of nuclear war with "thinking the unthinkable."
Mr. Wiener consulted on the future with clients as diverse as the
Stanford Research Institute, NASA and Shell Oil.
He worked for two years in the Nixon White House on urban policy and
was a longtime editor of the journal Technology in Society. He taught
for many years at what is now Polytechnic Institute of New York
University.
Mr. Wiener died before his grander predictions like finding life on
other planets or settling undersea colonies could be fulfilled. But
his prophecy that fax machines would become office workhorses by 2000
hit the mark, at least until e-mail displaced them.
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Keith Hudson, Saltford, England http://allisstatus.wordpress.com
<http://allisstatus.wordpress.com/>
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